31 May 2013

Hooray! This morning my passport and visa for travel to the Republic of Zambia was FedEx'd from Washington DC. The International Reporting Project at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University has selected me as one of ten international media fellows to report on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Zambia. The three week trip will happen in July and include stops in Germany and Ethiopia.

IRP notified me about a week before the GLAAD Award announcement but the official news release was about two weeks ago. Very excited and very grateful to be recognized by such a prestigious international fellowship and institution. I'll be reporting for various outlets and R20 from Zambia. I'm also pleased that my recent report on Zambia for The Atlantic went viral and encouraged more HIV/AIDS reporting from Zambia.

This would be my
second international fellowship and third trip to the continent in
the past 18 months. The first fellowship was a December 2011 trip to the high-level International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa in Addis Ababa sponsored by the Ethiopian government. I'm also scheduled to head overseas later this year on other projects. It's fantastic that IRP/SAIS has supported my work and other independent journalists. Thanks so much to everyone over the years who encouraged and supported me after leaving ABC News to become my own boss! #PraiseDance

03 May 2011

This is fascinating. Young Black gay and bisexual men—or men who have sex with men (MSM) in public health jargon—are up to five times more likely to contract HIV than other MSM. This is despite Centers for Disease Control data that suggests they don't necessarily have more unprotected sex.

A new study by investigators at Johns Hopkins and Emory Uniiversities—which we previewed last month at the Black Diaspora MSM Conference in the Dominican Republic—offers a possible explanation. Young Black MSM have a strong preference for "dominant" "masculine" partners and perceive "masculine" men as having much less HIV risk than "feminine" men.

Jonathan Ellen, M.D., a pediatrician and teen health expert at Johns Hopkins presented the findings of their study at the 2011 Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting in Denver. The study results are based on semi-structured interviews with 35 black men MSM ages 18 to 24 in NYC and upstate New York, and Atlanta.

The research noted these young black MSM select partners and judge these partners' HIV status in a specific way. The most notable findings include an overwhelming preference for masculine partners, accepting masculine partners as dominant in the sex act and leaving to them decisions about condom use, perceiving masculine men as low risk for HIV and feminine men as high risk. The researchers say this dynamic of preferring masculine men, while also equating masculinity with lower HIV risk helps explain why young black MSM contract HIV more often than their counterparts from other races.

"There may be no difference in HIV prevalence between masculine-looking and feminine-looking men, but because black MSM perceive masculine men as lower risk, their sexual encounters with such men may make HIV infection more likely," said Dr. Ellen.